


i know i'm a wolf

by AllonsyHelen



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, M/M, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Punk Bucky Barnes, Roommates, Unrequited Crush, the work title comes from a song that's cool, unrequited loooove
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-01-18
Updated: 2015-01-22
Packaged: 2018-03-08 00:47:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,584
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3189518
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AllonsyHelen/pseuds/AllonsyHelen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Freshman year at college, Bucky - AC/DC's biggest leather-clad fanboy - and Steve - knock him out with a twig, blows in strong winds, fierce and sarcastic - are roommates. Steve has a crush on a beautiful girl on campus, and Bucky agrees to help him out with getting her to fall in love with him. It doesn't work out quite as everyone hoped. Natasha will most likely be making an appearance. Angsty, fluffy, and self-indulgent.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. the one where they meet

**Author's Note:**

> Hello new friends! Not gonna say too much here since people rarely read these things anyway, just that I hope you enjoy this college/Punk!Bucky/Skinny!Steve/very indulgent fic with angst AND some fluff!  
> The title is from the song I Know I'm a Wolf by Young Heretics.  
> Enjoy and consider leaving Kudos or something if you do!

Truth is, Steve’s ma didn’t want him to come to college. The dorm rooms are full of mold and mice, she says, neither of which are good for his allergies, and the bathrooms are germ heaven to boot. She said that if he must go to college – which, he insisted, he must – he should at least go somewhere close to home and commute. He doesn’t want to commute though, he wants to live on campus, he wants to get the full college experience. It’s important to him and because he knows how to give her that look to which she always says yes, she says yes in the end.

When she sees his roommate – more specifically, his roommate’s tattoo which shows as he extends his arm to hang up his Metallica poster and the leather jacket comes up to expose his forearm, which is incased in a full-sleeve tattoo – she almost grabs Steve and pulls him away. She almost enrolls him in community college where he can’t get himself killed. It’s bad enough that he’s come home bloody nearly a dozen times, blaming the uneven sidewalks, but the concrete can’t give him a black eye no matter how hard he falls. She does pull him into the hallway and checks the number above the door. “We’re sure this is your room?” she asks.

“Yeah, I’m sure, it’s fine,” Steve assures her. “C’mon, let’s be polite!” He steps back into the room. “Hi, I’m Steve!” he says.

His roommate turns and breaks into a grin that goes right into his eyes. “Hiya, Steve, I’m Bucky. Says James Barnes on all the forms but that ain’t my name.” He steps down off the bed and offers a hand to shake. He’s wearing a thick black leather band around his wrist. Steve kind of likes it. He takes Bucky’s hand and gives it a firm shake. Bucky smiles wider.

“Hello then, Bucky,” he says. He gives his mother, who’s hovering in the doorway with uncertainty in everything from her furrowed brow to the way she sets her shoulders, a reassuring look. He’s nice! he indicates with a jerk of his head. She peels away from the doorframe.

“Hello, James,” she says politely. Steve rolls his eyes. Bucky’s grin goes from 100 to 85.

“Hello, Mrs. Rogers,” he says. “Nice to meet ya.”

“Nice to meet you too. You didn’t respond to any of my son’s emails.”

Steve feels like he’s going to become a tomato, or at least be mistaken for one. “Ma, please,” he whisper-begs out of the corner of his mouth.

“Well he didn’t!” she says to him, trying to justify herself.

Bucky just laughs. “No, I didn’t, you’re right. Never got around to checking my email is all. Sorry about that. Hope we didn’t end up with two TVs! ‘cept of course we didn’t because I didn’t even bring one.”

Steve shakes his head. “Nah, I didn’t bring one either.”

Bucky groans. “Great, we’ll be the only people on the hall who actually have to talk to each other.” But he winks and it’s a spectacular wink. Steve’s mother is uncomfortable.

“I’ll head back out to the car, we’ve got lots of boxes, Stevie,” she says. Steve rolls his eyes good-naturedly and turns to follow her.

They’re silent on the walk out of the hall but as he’s lifting a box of bedding supplies and she’s picking up the foldable shelving unit, she says, “I don’t know about this.”

“Don’t know about what?” Steve asks, adjusting the box in his grip.

“This whole thing. College. You know you already get in enough trouble as it is, Steve…” 

She’s worried for him and it would be endearing if it weren’t slightly aggravating. Still, he does his best to look and sound reassuring as he says, “I won’t get in trouble here, I promise. People in high school…” They had been assholes, plain and simple, they’d made him angry and he couldn’t help but pick fights he wouldn’t have any chance of losing. He was the scrawniest guy in the whole school, but he never bought into the self-loathing thing. He knew his body was weak but that didn’t have to mean everything was. His personality sure wasn’t, neither was his sense of right and wrong. Sometimes he didn’t think anyone else understood that.

“Please don’t, Steve,” she said, giving him an earnest look. “I don’t want any calls… I don’t want you getting hurt. I just want you to be safe. And your roommate…Bucky… He seems, well…” She seems to be thinking of a way to be tactful. “I don’t want you falling in with a bad crowd is all. There will be pressures here, you understand that your studies-”  
“My studies come first. Always. Cross my heart.” Steve starts back toward the building with his bedding in tow. “Please be civil to Bucky.”

He hears her muttering the name to herself, Bucky, as she walks along behind him. He just rolls his eyes and tries the name out for himself: “Bucky,” he whispers, pursing his lips for the B and letting the Y roll for a bit. It’s not a bad name. Not at all.

-

Bucky’s standing back, surveying his handiwork with the posters. It isn’t everyone he loves – he left out Slipknot because he’s still not sure how he felt about All Hope is Gone, but he was sure to include Led Zeppelin, and KISS if only because the poster is the most badass thing in the world. He wishes there were more space because he’d love to include AC/DC but there just isn’t enough room for another poster. Maybe if he moved some things around…

The door opens and he turns. His roommate, Steve, comes in with a box nearly bigger than himself – at least, it’s bigger than his upper half. He looks comical peering over the top of it and Bucky stifles a laugh.

“Where’s your parents?” Steve asks, setting it down and opening it up. His mother comes in behind him, giving Bucky a wary look. Bucky wishes she’d stop looking at him like that. Maybe it’s the earring.

“They left already,” Bucky replies. “We got here early. My dad likes to be on time but he accounts too much for traffic.”

“Where are you from, Bucky?” Steve’s mother asks, setting down the shelving unit.

“I’m from the Bronx,” Bucky replies. He doesn’t like how his name sounds coming from her lips. It’s not the name but the way she says it, like she’d so much rather call him James. “And ma’am, you can call me whatever you like.” It’s the politest stab he can think of, nothing she can prove was rude.

“Bucky is fine,” she says. “I’m just used to referring to you as James.”

Steve groans in embarrassment as he puts the fitted sheet onto the mattress. “Mom,” he complains. “Could you just be cool?”

She clucks her tongue. “I’ll go get another box,” she says stiffly. Steve looks like he regrets it immediately and he’s about to turn to stop her, Bucky can tell, and he’s thinking about breaking out the popcorn, but Steve doesn’t do anything and she goes.

“Sorry about her,” Steve says. “She’s usually a great lady. Well she’s still great, she’s just upset today I think because she’ll miss me, you know? How were your parents when you said goodbye?”

“It was a fuckin’ mess,” Bucky says, sitting on his bed, leaning his back against the wall. “My mom trying not to cry. My dad trying not to scoot too early. Where’s your dad?”

He can tell by the way Steve stops moving for just a moment that his dad is either dead or gone, and he regrets prying. “Dead,” Steve says, voice stiff as the mattress he’s wrestling the sheet onto.

“Sorry,” Bucky says. He means it but he isn’t sure how to phrase it to show that, exactly.

“Long time ago anyway,” Steve explains as if that changes much.

“Sure,” Bucky agrees. He stands up but has nothing to do, so he straightens out some of the things on his desk and sits back down.

“Just she’ll be alone now and stuff,” Steve continues. He’s focusing on the top sheet now, tucking it in, using hospital corners, of course. Bucky’s not surprised.

“Sure,” Bucky repeats. He’s about to figure out something else to say when Steve’s mom comes back in the door with another box. Her slouch seems deeper and Bucky isn’t sure if it’s only because he knows why now.

“Anything I could go get?” he asks, getting up.

“Sure,” she says, looking like his high school teachers when he passed a test they’d assumed he’d fail.

“Which car?” he asks.

“White van.”

He goes out and down the halls, thinks about how they’re a labyrinth but he could never say it for fear of it sounding stupid, and pushes out into the relative heat of upstate New York in August. There’s a white van with its trunk open and he grabs a box filled with various healthy snack foods. It’s the heaviest thing there and he’s not sure Steve could lift it without his arms falling off. He carries it awkwardly into the building and up the stairs, dropping it onto the floor in the middle of their room when he gets there. “There you go, safe and sound,” he announces.

“Thanks,” Steve says. He’s putting clothes into the dresser.

“Sure,” Bucky says. He gives Steve a look, a once over and then another, before turning for the door. “See you later, I’ll let you settle and, you know. Goodbye and stuff.” He leaves, patting the doorframe as he does so, so his hand is the last thing they see before he disappears down the hall.

Steve’s mother turns to him. “It’s not too late to back out,” she says for the seventeenth time.

Steve sighs. “Mom. Stop. I’m gonna have a good time here.”

She eyes the door. “If you ever, for one second, want to come home, just call me. I’m not far away.”

“I know,” he says. He pulls her into a hug. “Me either,” he says. “Not far away, I mean.”

“I know,” she says. She pats his back. He coughs. “Now! Let’s finish up this room, shall we?”

He catches her eyeing the posters on Bucky’s side of the room, along with his black bedspread and blood red pillowcase, more than once before she leaves.


	2. the one with the girl in red

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys! This is probably the general frequency with which I'll be updating these, since I'm doing this college thing too and whatnot. I'll try not to let it go any more than five days without an update though, since I feel too guilty when that happens! Hope you guys are enjoying :) Leave kudos and comments and stuff please?

The first night is awkward due to the fact that neither Steve nor Bucky believe they have anything in common with the other. They’re wrong, of course, but how are they supposed to know that? Bucky seems like a future Public Enemy number 1, though Steve wouldn’t say it and he knows he should really stop judging people based on their appearances (and apparent interests). But he can’t stop himself sometimes, and this time he’s trying desperately to stay calm and not make assumptions. He’s worried he won’t make any friends at college as it is, and he was hoping his roommate would be his first and closest friend. They’d do everything together, eat together and share snacks in the room, order Chinese on a Friday night, help each other study… It looks like they only have one class together – the excruciating math class they both have to take as a university requirement. Steve is going for art while Bucky is undeclared and therefore taking all his core requirements while he figures out, in his words, ‘What the hell the point of me being on this earth is after all.’

Their classes don’t start for a few days, and first they have to drag themselves from one Fun Organized Orientation Activity to the next. Bucky calls each of them a Shitfest individually as he reads down the list the first morning. “Getting to know me, getting to know you,” he reads in a fake perky voice, sitting on his bed as Steve laces up his Converse sneakers. “Sounds like a reeeeeal party.”

Steve laughs a little but he wishes Bucky wouldn’t be quite so cynical. “Maybe it won’t really be so bad!” he says. “I mean these are our classmates for the next four years.”

“Yeah until half of them drop out and the other half transfers,” Bucky says, eyeing Steve’s shoelaces.

“Do you plan on doing those things?” Steve asks, eyebrows raised, sitting up.

Bucky shrugs a little. “Probably not. Not like I can really afford anywhere else ya know?”

Steve nods. “Sure,” he agrees. “Me either. My ma doesn’t want me here in the first place and I had to beg for months, so now it’s a pride thing to stay.” Plus, he really wanted to be here. He couldn’t imagine a reason that would make him want to drop out or transfer.

“I’m a little over the whole formal education institution, to be honest,” Bucky says, and coming out of his mouth it sounds like something he’s said many times. “I think it’s just that they try to keep us down and hold us with rules and stop us from rebelling but hell, we’re gonna do it anyway or we’re not gonna do it at all! They think they can control us now before we blow, get us all calm and stuff. Well I really don’t think it’s gonna work, it’s more like a powder keg.”

Steve looks at him, straightening up, finished with his shoes. He has no idea what to say about that. He feels like he’s talking to a hippy from the 70s. There’s nothing wrong with hippies – it’s just he has no idea what to say to them. “Yeah,” he says vaguely.

Bucky gets up, heaving a big sigh. “C’mon. Let’s go.” He motions toward the door. “Don’t wanna miss getting to know me, and getting to know you.” He winks, grabs his key off the desk, and walks out the door. Steve gets his own key and follows, a little less certainly.

\--

At lunch neither of them has anyone else to sit with because despite the ice breaker activity, neither Steve nor Bucky was able to make friends. For the former, it was due to his small stature and just-too-bright smile. People thought maybe there was something up with him or he was just one of those annoying geeks. It was disheartening, but he was glad to look over and see Bucky in another group sulking on the outskirts, arms crossed, shoulders hunched, scowl on his face. At least Bucky hasn’t made friends either, Steve found himself thinking. 

“I hate being forced into groups,” Bucky says, biting down on his burger. Ketchup squirts out between the bun and the meat as he does so. “I’m gonna make the friends I wanna make when I wanna do it. I hate to say it but I wish we could just start classes already ya know?”

Steve nods because he agrees, although he’s excited for classes because he thinks they’ll be interesting. Plus, that’s why they’re here. “Me too. Orientation kind of sucks.” He eats a french fry. His mother is worried that he won’t find anything to eat here, and she has a valid point. His list of allergies was longer than the form would allow, and they had to staple a lined piece of paper to the back of it just to continue listing them. And that didn’t even include miscellaneous health issues and their corresponding medications.

Bucky groans. “Well. Tell me about yourself, Steve. There’s gotta be something we can talk about.”

“Yeah I mean I grew up in Brooklyn so that’s not too different from the Bronx,” Steve suggests. “We have that in common.”

“Yeah,” Bucky agrees, but they’re both silent as they realize that’s not entirely true, and plus, what is there to say about the city they share? “You miss it?” Bucky asks finally.

“Yeah,” Steve says. “It’s good to be out a little further though, you know, air’s better…”

“Didn’t even think of that,” Bucky says, in true form as one of the medically ‘elite’, those who don’t have to worry about their bodies failing them at any – and every – point.

“Well it’s true,” Steve says awkwardly. He doesn’t feel like getting into anything further than that, and every time he tells someone he has asthma, or weak lungs, or a heart condition, they look at him like he’s fragile. That, or they act like he wants attention for it. He prefers to keep it to himself now, though being his roommate, Bucky will inevitably find out.

“You got hobbies or something?” Bucky asks.

“Yeah, I draw and do some painting,” Steve replies. “Mostly I do that and school. I like music too though.”

“Me too,” Bucky says in an eager voice that contrasts with his leather jacket. It suggests maybe he’s more interested in making a friend than he acts like he is. Steve wonders if  
Bucky also feels a little upset that they’re roommates, seeing as they have nothing in common and aren’t likely friends. “Not art. I suck at art. But music.”

“Probably not the same type of music I like,” Steve says, and Bucky nods in agreement, about to say something when Steve’s attention is taken by someone behind Bucky and his gaze move from his face to a girl at the next table. She’s sitting down, putting her plate on the table and sliding into her seat. She has her dark brown hair pulled back into a pony tail but it’s curly and parts of it come loose. She has a red headband on and bright red lipstick that matches her red sundress. Steve is completely taken by her. He isn’t sure he’s ever seen someone quite so beautiful. Bucky notices and turns.

“Stop!” Steve exclaims in a panicked voice. “Don’t look!”

Bucky turns back to him with an amused smile. “Her? Red dress?”

“She’s beautiful,” Steve whispers in awe.

Bucky laughs. “Guess so,” he says. “Probably a little preppy. Wonder why she’s not at Harvard.”

“I’m glad she’s not,” Steve says, trying not to look like he’s watching her, shifting his gaze between Bucky and her.

“Wow I think your pupils have literally turned into stars,” Bucky says, making a gagging noise.

Steve turns to look at him for real. “She’s so pretty! Don’t you think? Come on, tell me you disagree.”

“I don’t disagree,” Bucky says. “I just find teenage dating excessive and unnecessary.”

“Excessive?”

“Like people do it too much and it doesn’t actually work out and that leads to hipster sad love songs which top the fucking charts.” Bucky sips his soda. “Just think the dating institution should really be rethought is all.”

“Rethought how?” Steve asks, interested.

“Rethought in that it shouldn’t exist. There should be an age limit or something.”

“On dating?” Steve raises his eyebrows doubtfully. “Really?”

“Sure!” Bucky scoots his chair to the side a little so Steve has a better view of the beautiful mystery girl, but he does so with a little scowl so he doesn’t seem too soft.

“Did you have a bad experience or something?” Steve asks curiously.

“Not really,” Bucky says. “I mean I’ve been around my side of the block a couple times. Guys, girls, what have you. All good fucks. I’m just not gonna go holding hands in public or anything like that.”

Steve tilts his head. “You’re bisexual?” he asks.

Bucky gives him an annoyed look. “Does it matter? I like guys and girls.”

“Means you’re bisexual.”

“Guess I am.” Bucky shrugs. “I’m not super into labels and I’m not going to go around joining any pride groups. I don’t really think there should be any such things as labels.”

“Labels can sometimes be a little confusing,” Steve allows. He’s straight, he’s pretty sure, but he tries not to think about it too much. He doesn’t know what his ma would think about it if he was bi or something. He knows he can’t be gay because he’s definitely had crushes on girls before. It just gets a little confusing because he’s also had crushes on guys, he thinks. That’s the part he’s not sure about though. Could be that a weird part of him wants to be bi. Maybe. He clears the thoughts from his head because every time he thinks about it too long he gets depressed.

“Labels get in the way,” Bucky said. “And they never really fit anyone too well.” He stirred the ice cubes around in his coke with his pointer finger. “But you’re clearly into women.” He nods his head backwards toward the beautiful mystery girl. Steve blushes and it doesn’t go unnoticed. “Oh God man you blush hard!”

“I do not!” Of course this only makes Steve turn redder. He covers his face with his hand, looking down at his plate.

“You do!” Bucky’s laughing. “Ah shit. You are funny. I gotta go though.” He stands up with his plate and cup. “See you on the flip side.”

“Yeah see you,” Steve says faintly, trying not to be too obvious when looking at the girl in red one table over. It’s just that she’s one of those people with one of those faces that shines so brightly in the bland dining hall of a state university that Steve can’t help but stare. One day in and he’s already got himself a completely unattainable crush on none other than Peggy Carter. But he doesn’t know that yet.


End file.
